The importance of a foreign language education is often overlooked in high-school education systems. Oftentimes when it is applied to curriculum, young students are given a brief run-down of language, briefly skimming over basic grammar without instructors instilling an understanding of crucial aspects such as voice, function, case, and inflection in their students.
Knowing a Native Language isn't always Enough
Students entering college and applying to become English majors quickly find that due to their previous under-education, they are faced with a unique set of problems. Sitting in English 101 classes and while filling up Creative Language electives, they may all too quickly discover that the idea of a direct object being in the accusative case or the construction of a sentence in the passive voice eludes their understanding, and they may find themselves ready to jump ship and abandon their passion for English simply because the mechanics of their own native language were never explained to them.
What is an English student to do? Thankfully, here is where foreign language instruction intervenes and saves the student from intuitive knowledge he randomly applies to the usage of native language, and shows him the real governing rules and structure of a language.
Benefits of Learning a Second Language
Second languages ensure familiarization with the eight parts of speech, which are all crucial cogs in the machine that makes up a language. Every student of English must know these. It is simply not enough for the future writer, teacher or office worker to know how to write; he or she must understand what the rules of writing are and how to make all the intricate puzzle pieces of words into larger pictures consisting of sentences and paragraphs.
Second languages familiarize students with the rules of grammar and use of the parts of speech. Developing understanding of concepts such as number, case, voice, inflection, gender, conjugation and a further understanding of these concepts in application to their native language.
Individual words meld together to miraculously create new meaning. Without an understanding of these individual meanings, the student may become lost, wandering through a world where a larger meaning may be imposed upon him without his ability to truly comprehend it
Second language acquisition improves critical reading skills and interpretation. Oftentimes the foreign language student must untangle adjectives from adverbs, verbs from nouns and navigate his way through a maze of words, deducing them down to their correct meanings. Students must then apply their skills of logic and try to discover if the meaning is metaphorical, literal or a colloquialism. These abilities can help English students skillfully dismantle arguments in their own language and read for literal as well as figurative meaning in literature and explore new arguments.
Second Language Acquisition Improves Use of all Language
Learning language should not be narrowed down to one specific area. To be a successful writer, you must first be a successful language-learner. It is not simply enough to have a rudimentary understanding of words which is haphazardly applied to writing in a hit or miss approach. There is an old saying that states that if one wishes to break the rules, first one must understand the rules. This applies to every aspect of education – especially English.
If one wishes to create edgy writing, interpret literature for deeper meanings, and turn the literary world on its head, then one must first understand the literary world – a world full of individual words grouped together to create unique meaning. With a foreign language under his or her belt, the English major can then explore the world of his own language more efficiently and derive more meaning from what he reads and sees around him.
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